Last post for June...

It’s hard to believe that it’s already the end of June.  The time has certainly flown by, despite the relative tediousness of pandemic life.  But here we are once again, at what feels like the end of something, a certain melancholy for the end of the school year, but also the excitement of what seems like an endless stretch of lazy summer days… 

Speaking of the end of something, as of July 1, Feedburner, the platform Blogger uses to deliver new posts to subscribers’ email addresses, will be cancelled, so if you are a subscriber who follows by email, this is the last post that will be delivered to you.  I have been considering some options and would like to offer the following:  if you would like me to send a link for each new post to you personally, please email me at:  juliesreadingcorner@gmail.com and I will begin this service as of next week.  A friend also sent me this suggestion:  If you are an RSS/Atom feed reader, you can subscribe to this blog’s Atom feed at this link :  http://www.juliesreadingcorner.com/feeds/posts/default.  I hope you will continue to read my posts and hopefully find some interesting book suggestions, and I will do my best to provide options to make this transition easy and seamless.  Thank you to everyone who visits this blog - I appreciate it!

I read an interesting book last week, another techno-thriller, this one by Irish-Canadian author Ed O’Loughlin.  This Eden begins in Vancouver with two students who end up together due to circumstance and stay together seemingly out of convenience.  Alice is a computer genius who wants to change the world.  Michael just barely squeaked by the entrance exams to get into Engineering.  They meet one afternoon when a group of students are enjoying a rare snowy day, knowing that these weather conditions are brief and fleeting. They end up together for the rest of their time at university, until Alice drops out and says she wants to go and work for a big tech company in Silicon Valley, one she has for years professed to despise.  When the news of this company’s plan to introduce Omnicent, a cryptocurrency that will eventually wipe out the use of money, Alice knows something must be done or governments around the world will lose all power and will ultimately topple.  Then Alice disappears and Michael is at a loss for what to do next, how to go on living.  When he is recruited by this same tech company because of his relationship with Alice, he suspects that there is more going on than they are saying, but he has no proof.  Then he is reluctantly but forcibly drawn into an espionage plan by an Irish asset named Aoife and her elusive boss, Towse, and his boring life changes forever.  What follows is a rollercoaster ride of plot twists and turns through what I think of as “Around the world of horrors in 400 pages”.  I really enjoyed this novel, which pulled me along in the excitement of the chase every step of the way and every page of the book.  But it was so much more than a techno-thriller.  It was a literary exploration into the very things that make up our existence in the world, and asks us to consider who we are and how we define ourselves.  I have to say, though, that despite how gripping this novel was, after reaching the last page, I felt that I needed a break from reading about the darkest sides of humanity.  I would definitely recommend this well-written literary thriller to just about anyone.

That’s all for today.  Stay cool and keep reading!

Bye for now…
Julie

Post on a perfect Father's Day morning...

The sun is shining, the birds are singing, the breeze is blowing… this may be the most perfect morning of the year so far.  And I’ve got a steaming cup of chai, a delicious date bar and a yummy banana muffin to enjoy as I write this post, too, so it really is a perfect morning.

Last week I read a novel that was a bit outside my comfort zone, Version Zero by Young Adult author David Yoon.  Max is a shining star at Wren, the youngest person to ever hold his position at this large social media company.  When he is singled out to head up a new initiative called the Soul Project, he has his reservations:  this project is devoted to mining personal data of the “squishy” sort, sexual preferences, political leanings, etc., to create “emotional profiles” of its users.  When he discovers that this information is being sold to intelligence organizations, he confronts the CEO and is summarily dismissed and then blackballed across Silicon Valley.  He, along with his equally talented tech friend (and secret love of his life), Akiko, decide that the only way to stop what Wren and other big tech companies are doing to their users is to “reboot” the internet, to go back to “version zero”.  When assistance comes in an unexpected way, Max and Akiko, along with Akiko’s boyfriend, and Max’s long-time friend, Shane, jump at the opportunity, but soon realize that this offer comes at a cost.  Can Max save the world from systematic data mining or are internet users forever doomed to sell their souls for access to another free app?  I don’t know much about tech stuff, but this novel started off in such a hip, easy, conversational way that I was immediately hooked.  And I felt that I was learning, along with Max, about the dark side of big tech companies.  But around the mid-point, the plot took an unexpected turn and I kind of lost interest, but it was such a quick easy read that I stuck with it, and I’m glad I did because it had a decent ending that tied up all the loose ends.  I discovered that the author is the husband of another Young Adult author, Nicola Yoon, who wrote Everything, Everything, which I really enjoyed.  This was David Yoon's first novel for adults, and I'm now interested in checking out his YA books, as he clearly writes well and can create an intriguing story.

That’s all for today.  Get outside and enjoy the day, and do something special for your dad, or any other significant person in your life. 

Bye for now…
Julie

Tea and treats on a less hot Sunday morning...

It’s cooled off significantly over the past few days, and with more seasonal temperatures, the weather’s been positively delightful.  I’ve been out for a long walk already, my new routine to avoid the worst of the UV rays during mid-day, so I feel I've really earned my tea and treat.  I've got a big mug of very strong Pu-Erh Exotic tea and an especially yummy Date Bar to look forward to, and I know it’s going to be a great day!

I read an interesting book last week, Red Oblivion by Canadian author Leslie Shimotakahara.  Set in modern-day Hong Kong, this book explores one woman’s attempt to uncover distressing family secrets, despite her father's efforts to keep them hidden.  Jill and Celeste, both living in the Toronto area, return home to Hong Kong to care for their ninety-four year-old father (Ba) who has recently fallen ill and is in hospital.  Celeste, who harbours no feelings of nostalgia for her childhood, wants nothing to do with any of this, and can’t wait to get home to her husband and her life. Jill, on the other hand, is still blinkered to what her sister thinks of as their real past and does her best to keep alive her own version of a childhood in which her father was not neglectful, but, while not doting, was actually there for her, at least some of the time.  What Jill discovers as she tends to her father’s business demands while he is incapacitated, however, makes her reconsider all the stories her Ba told her over the years about his struggles to save his family during the Cultural Revolution and his efforts to make money and build a business out of nothing.  Who’s been mailing her Ba these strange items, and what do they mean?  Where did the money to start this business come from?  And who had to suffer for her Ba to get it?  I was hesitant to read this book because I know nothing about Mao and the Socialist Education Movement, China’s Cultural Revolution and the Red Guards, but Shimotakahara did a good job of explaining things in a very basic way that made it easy for this reader to understand and follow.  This book was as much about the relationship between a daughter and her father as it was about the fairly recent violent history of China, and one woman’s attempt to do the right thing.  The parallels to King Lear were none too subtle, with the dreams and the visions and the favourite daughter who loves her father best, but these actually helped to give a different context to the story, one that had nothing to do with the potentially violent means by which Jill’s father accrued his wealth, and the nasty historical events he somehow managed to survive.  I felt like I learned something about Chinese history, and the details of Jill’s experiences living in Hong Kong were vivid and interesting.  The story dragged at times, but overall it was a good book about an unpleasant subject, and Jill’s efforts to undo the wrongs of the past, if only on a small scale, are very timely indeed.

That’s all for today.  Get outside and enjoy the rest of the weekend!

Bye for now…
Julie

Feelin' hot, hot, hot... again...

It’s back to unseasonably hot, humid weather this weekend, which is why I’m starting this post later than usual.  I’ve already been out for my daily walk to fill my step quota while it was still cool-ish.  Now, in the air-conditioned house, I can enjoy a steaming cup of chai and a delicious Date Bar while I tell you about yesterday’s book club meeting and the fabulous book I read last week.

My Volunteer book club met yesterday to discuss Jennifer Close’s debut novel, Girls in White Dresses.  This was a reread for me (actually a re-listen).  Here’s what I said about it in my post from April, 2020:

“... I finished an audiobook early last week that was fabulous.  Girls in White Dresses by Jennifer Close is so very different from the types of novels I normally read or listen to that I was amazed at how much I enjoyed it.  Narrated by Emily Janice Card, this novel is told from the points of view of several different young women whose stories are all linked together by various weddings, showers, and other dating or marriage-related events.  It opens with Isabella, aged twelve, preparing to be a bridesmaid in her sister Molly’s wedding, what she believed was “the most beautiful wedding anyone would ever have”.  But ten years later, after college and a move to New York, crammed in with her roommate, Mary, Isabella has become disillusioned with the whole dating and romance scene.  She is looking for a job, a boyfriend, and a way to be happy, but her pursuits are met with disappointment again and again.  What follows are different stories involving various friends of Isabella’s, including studious Mary and boozy Lauren, as they all search for love “in all the wrong places”.  This is the ultimate “chick lit” novel, where the trials and tribulations of being a woman are dealt with in a lighthearted way, a genre that I generally avoid.  But I’m so glad I took a chance this time and trusted my instinct when I chose to judge this book by its cover, which is what really drew me in.  I listen to audiobooks mainly when I’m outside walking, and I was particularly thankful for social distancing as I was chuckling and laughing out loud at some parts of this delightfully insightful, humourous book... I would recommend this novel to any woman who needs an upbeat, entertaining book to keep her spirits up during this rather challenging time.”

I had the same experience this time, appreciating all the humorous moments a second time around, but also being wow-ed by the insightfulness of the author.  Unfortunately, this time around, I also noticed that there was a lot of drinking and swearing, which wouldn’t normally faze me, but because I was listening to it through the lens of “book club selection”, I had to question the appropriateness of the book for the members of my book club. This was one of the aspects of the novel they commented on yesterday, but they also found humour and, as one member said, “philosophy and wisdom”.  And they were all able to identify with at least one character or situation.  While it was not the best choice for the group, it was a good discussion, one during which we all thought back to our experiences as young women struggling to fit into our new adult lives.

I also read a page-turner last week, The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz.  Jacob (Jake) Finch Bonner is a middle-aged writer with one successful novel to his name.  After failing to produce anything else of worth, he’s been reduced to teaching a Creative Writing workshop in a low-residency MFA program in the less-than-noteworthy Ripley College.  Trudging through his third year of this workshop he meets Evan Parker/Parker Evan, an arrogant, over-confident student who is convinced he needs nothing from this program because he is going to write a bestselling novel with the kind of plot that will make him famous:  everyone will be reading it; Oprah will want to interview him; book clubs will discuss it; it will be optioned for a film with an A-list director.  He is very private about his writing, but one day during a one-on-one session, he reveals his plot to Jake, who is shocked into finally believing that Parker may indeed have the makings of a bestseller.  The workshop ends, and three years later, Jake is working at a hotel that has been repurposed as a writers’ retreat, still with no new work worthy of publication.  He is reminded of Parker one day by a brash, cocky resident, and he goes online to find out if this amazing book was ever written.  What he finds instead is that Parker died shortly after his time at Ripley.  Jake ponders this new information, and wonders (briefly) what to do now that he alone is in possession of this amazing plot.  Well, write the book, of course!  After all, as any writer knows, stories are meant to be told, even if they belong to someone else.  Fast-forward another three years, and Crib is published to great acclaim. Everyone is reading it, it is optioned for a film being directed by someone who could certainly be classified as “A-list”, he’s met a wonderful woman, and life is good… until he receives that first message accusing him of being a thief, and his life begins to spiral out of control.  I would love to tell you more, but that would spoil the fun.  I wish I knew someone else who has read this book, as the plot was so complex and detailed, with so many twists and turns, that it would make for a really interesting discussion.  Alas, I will settle for telling you that it was a roller-coaster read that kept me wishing for more free time.  According to the “Kirkus” review, this isn’t even Koreltz’ best book, so I will definitely seek out her other books.  I will agree with most reviews that it was easy to guess in which direction the novel was going well before it was revealed, but I was still shocked by the "BIG" reveal. It began as a study of the writing process and the struggles writers go through to put together a new book, a great example of metafiction, but from the point where he receives his first threatening message, it becomes a mystery-thriller that, while very compelling, somehow felt bit flat. Having said that, it was totally worth the time spent to read it, if only because it has introduced me to a writer I'd never read before, which is much like opening a door I’d never realized was there!

That’s all for today.  Stay cool and keep reading!

Bye for now…
Julie